U.S.|Atlanta Airport Reopens After No Bombs Are Found on Threatened Planes

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Atlanta Airport Reopens After No Bombs Are Found on Threatened Planes

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Passengers board a shuttle taking them off the tarmac at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where two airplanes were being searched after a bomb threat.CreditCreditDavid Goldman/Associated Press

ATLANTA — Part of the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was closed on Saturday while the authorities investigated bomb threats, posted online, against two commercial jetliners that were passing through the airport, the world’s busiest.

No explosives were found on the planes, operated by Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines, but the episode offered an example of the sensitivity with which the authorities address such threats and how they can abruptly cause chaos.

The military briefly scrambled warplanes into the skies over Georgia, and law enforcement officials interviewed passengers after they arrived in Atlanta, where one of the airport’s five runways was shut down. Law enforcement officials said computer analysts and federal agents were attempting to locate the person who posted the threats on Twitter.

“This person was engaging directly with the airlines and the person had partial flight numbers, but the airlines weren’t sure whether they were being intentionally misleading,” a law enforcement official said. “The airlines were able to go back and piece it together and determine which planes they were talking about, and the airlines, on their own, put in motion the process to land the planes.”

The affected flights were Delta Flight 1156, which departed from Portland, Ore., and Southwest Flight 2492, which originated in Milwaukee. Southwest said its flight had 91 people onboard, including five crew members.

By the time federal law enforcement officials were alerted to the threats, the military had put fighter jets from South Carolina’s McEntire Joint National Guard Base in the air, to escort the planes. A spokesman for the military’s North American Aerospace Defense Command, Preston Schlachter, said the fighter jets had been deployed as “a precautionary measure.”

Saturday’s threats came amid heightened fears about security at Atlanta’s airport after federal authorities in December charged a Delta baggage handler in a firearms trafficking plot. In what the F.B.I.’s top agent in Atlanta described as “a serious security breach,” officials said the 31-year-old man had repeatedly smuggled weapons through security checkpoints and into carry-on baggage on flights to New York. The firearms were later sold illegally, the authorities said.

After that incident, local officials pledged to improve security at the airport, which handled more than 94 million passengers in 2013 and has for years held the distinction of being the busiest in the world.